‘A Real Pain’ review: Jesse Eisenberg directs a moving road trip film
This touching story about generational trauma and guilt is elevated by Kieran Culkin’s performance
“This will be a tour about pain,” cautions James, the earnest British guide shepherding a group of American Jews on a tour of Poland. The small group includes David and Benji, two cousins from New York on a visit to Poland to honour their recently deceased grandmother Dori, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust.
Best known for this starring role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg writes, directs and stars in this holocaust comedy playing David, who like Eisenberg, suffers from OCD and anxiety disorder. David has a regular job, a wife and child and uses pills to deal with his anxiety. He’s socially awkward and envies Benji’s ease and charm. Benji road-rolls his cousin and trivialises his life choices.
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In this two-hander, a touching and personal story about generational trauma and guilt is elevated by Kieran Culkin’s performance as cousin Benji who channels his impressive performance as Roman Roy in Succession, adding layers of pathos to this mercurial, funny, struggling, troubled man.
In an interview, Eisenberg said he had written a story about cousins on a trip to Mongolia, but decided to relocate it to Poland when he saw an advertisement for “Auschwitz tours (with lunch)”. The inspiration for grandma Dori was Eisenberg’s aunt Doris, who he spoke to weekly and who died in 2019.
Benji and David’s different personalities become immediately apparent as they navigate the airport and the long flight. In Warsaw, the join a small tour group which includes a recently single American woman Marcia (Jennifer Grey) and a Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a Rwandan survivor of the genocide, who has converted to Judaism. The group is led by James (Will Sharpe, on point) and the tour includes a visit to a concentration camp, filmed at the camp at Majdanek, outside Lublin. But Benji’s behaviour is unpredictable, exacerbating the already edgy David. At one point, David summarises Benji’s behaviour saying, “You light up a room and then you shit on everything inside of it.”
At times the film feels like a postcard for ‘Visit Poland’, yet the journey is triggering and leads to meltdowns and deeper conversations between David and Benji, who eventually peel away from the group to make a private visit to their grandmother’s birth place. A Real Pain keeps the cousins in the foreground while alluding to many things, including mental health, middle age angst, identity, fragility and grief, underscored by a dominance of piano-based musical pieces by Polish composer Frederic Chopin, performed by Tzvi Erez.
Eisenberg tenderly and firmly directs the movie, entering the Holocaust experience through a comic road trip, speaking of modern life and several unmined feelings that continue to haunt third generation Americans.
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Business NewsLoungeArt And Culture‘A Real Pain’ review: Jesse Eisenberg directs a moving road trip film
First Published:19 Jan 2025, 03:23 PM IST
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